Weeknight 'Virtual' Dev session #1, Thursday 20th August 2020, 7pm - 10pm

[Arcadian]

As the new games and demo coding sections of the forum are currently very active, we have launched a new, weeknight "Dev session" on Zoom, that will primarily be focused on the development of new games and graphics/music demos for Acorn computers as well as development tools, emulators and debuggers.

They take place the week in-between the 2 x Tuesday night 'general' sessions on the Thursday evening, between 7pm and 10pm.

The sessions are intended for developers to share progress updates and request/offer help and feedback. We hope that these sessions will help motivate and encourage developers to see projects through to completion.

Just to be clear - these sessions are open to everyone: programmers, graphics artists and musicians, even if you've just got an interest/appreciation of - or ideas for - new games and demos, please come along for moral support - there may be opportunities to beta-test new versions of upcoming projects .

If there are any issues you'd like help with - or would like to demonstrate something - please leave details in the thread and we'll add them to the lists of items to be covered.

We expect to broadly follow this loose schedule (if we don't have our first 'Masterclass' topic ready to record then we'll just get opinions on what our first masterclass video should be!).




Help/Assistance requested

1. Nothing yet!

New projects and updates

1. Nothing yet!

Attending

1. Arcadian (Dave).
2. ().
3. ().
4. ().
5. ().
6. ().
7. ().
8. ().
9. ().
10. ().
11. ().
12. ().
13. ().
14. ().
15. ().

[dudleysoft71]

I've got the evening free next week so I'd love to attend.

I'm not sure I'm ready to do a masterclass on arm Co-processor porting, but I could possibly do a bit of a show and tell with the projects I've been working on (provided my capture solution works, I haven't had a chance to test it yet)

James.

[BigEd]

I'm in! (But by all means punt me out if it frees up a valuable slot for someone who needs it. I am by no means an active dev, or likely to become one.)

[markdryan]

Me too please. From 8pm onwards.

[0xC0DE]

I will be there!
I am looking for some fresh ideas/guidance (all Electron related of course ) in at least 3 areas:

1. I've picked up 1-bit sound again (firstly, playing a sampled sound, e.g. speech) and have been experimenting with cycle accurate Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) with 5-bit resolution and upsampling. It sounds OK in only 1 emulator (CLK), mediocre on a real Elk, and unintelligible on Elkulator/Electrem. Currently experimenting with Pulse Frequency Modulation (PFM). Long term goal: polyphonic music player on the Elk.

2. I am trying to get back into finishing Mountain Panic for the Electron. I could use a fresh take on (overlapping) sprite plotting in MODE 2 (very slow on an Elk). The player sprite is smooth with no flicker until you reach the top of the screen. I can explain live how my sprite plotting currently differs from the original MP on the Beeb.

3. I am always looking for cool, innovative things (demo effects) to squeeze out of my Electron but I could use a few new & crazy ideas to try

[Dave Footitt]

2. I am trying to get back into finishing Mountain Panic for the Electron. I could use a fresh take on (overlapping) sprite plotting in MODE 2 (very slow on an Elk). The player sprite is smooth with no flicker until you reach the top of the screen. I can explain live how my sprite plotting currently differs from the original MP on the Beeb.

That would certainly be of interest to me. I know the original code isn't particularly optimal, so I wonder if I could take your routines and incorporate them into a future Mountain Panic 2 (I've been mulling this recently, with support for NuLA and sideways RAM.)

So put me on the list please Dave - I can show the NuLA thing I've spent the past couple of weeks doing. There isn't an awful lot to it but it has been fun to do. I'm hoping to finish it this coming week then I'll get back onto Monty which I can show at a future meet hopefully.

Cheers

[tricky]

I'll be there.
I can give a brief explanation of emulating the two arcade games that I have just ported to the beeb.
If there is interest, I can show a couple of the routines that I wrote to display the character map graphics and basic sprites, although they aren't that interesting or optimal!

https://youtu.be/XC3QX4lL-Z4 best watched in 720p on a 50Hz monitor.

https://youtu.be/Yy5RW7aDK98 best watched in 720p on a 50Hz monitor.
Spot the NuLA screenshot thumbnails

[Snuggsy187]

Yes please (work permitting !)

Been redesigning the Pooyan print routines - much improved raster time (see Pooyan Topic) !

Also looking at some Tony Oakden stuff, particularly how 'Quest' blanks some of the screen when drawing a new room, using an interrupt and T2 counter - it's all starting to make sense !

Looking forward to Thursday.
ps - all of the above topics are of interest !

[dudleysoft71]

Just tested my capture setup, it's a little unorthodox (basically using the HDMI in on the Xbox One and feeding the consoles output into the HDMI capture device) but it works, I used a similar setup to get my PS2 outputting a stable signal to my TV, so I presumed it would work where the capture device couldn't see the signal from the SCART/HDMI converter.

I've got a couple of projects that are on going, I can give a bit of a demonstration of those and explain a bit about the tech I've developed for them.

[kieranhj]

I've been figuring out my calendar for this week, but have confirmed I can attend so please put me down for the full session!

Project-wise I can do a show & tell of the Rocket Sync Tracker connected to Arculator - an interesting way of sequencing demos that has a lot of potential and may encourage folks to think in a more data-driven way.

And given that it was my idea, I'd be happy to present the first Masterclass, giving an Intro to Interrupts on the BBC Micro, since this seems to be the most requested topic. This would be a part #1, with a second part to follow at a future date.

[SarahWalker]

I should be there.

[dp11]

me too

[oss003]

Can you add me to the list?

I restarted debugging Hobgoblin but am still trying to find out what I did 4 years ago with the code .....
The Boing demo is also running on my Atom .... in Basic ... hopefully I can show it Thursday.

Greetings
Kees

[flibble]

Me please.

Not really done anything on my stuff, other than starting to annotate the repton music player code that was pointed out to me as an example of event driven code

[chrisn]

I'm not sure if I can make this one, but please put my name down just in case!

[JudgeBeeb]

Likewise, I may be able to make it. So please send me the sign in details if there is space still available.

[spanners]

I'll be there, but it might be late on, once I've got the kids to bed and had some exercise.

D.

[Arcadian]

Hi all, sorry I've been a bit 'absent' this week, everybody on the list should have by now received the sign-in details.

Fab that there'll be so much to discuss/demo - and thanks Kieran for stepping in to do the first 'Masterclass' video - I'll cobble together a loose suggested running order and publish it here before 7pm.

[Snuggsy187]

Been a total chaos week for me too - might be just slightly late tonight.

Many thanks (as ever) for organising, and thanks in advance to Kieran, looking forward to it !

[Arcadian]

Here's the content for tonight!



Consider it a checklist of items to go through, rather than a fixed running order (as some presenters may only be around at certain times)... though the 'Masterclass' should take place around 8.30pm as per basic schedule.

There's lots to get through, so I've brought the scheduled start for the agendered items forward by 15 mins, to 7.15pm.

See you soon!

[Arcadian]

Thanks to everyone that attended Thursday night's session - I really enjoyed it. The time flew!

Impressive demo of BAGI and Frontier on the Pi ARM co-pro there James, and the mystery 'reveal' was a wonderful surprise!

Dave Footitt, your 'reveal' was a real highlight too - some gorgeous art there from Chris; can't wait to have a play once it's finished...

Thanks especially to Kieran for preparing and presenting our first video in the Acorn Masterclass Series: An Introduction to Interrupts on the BBC Micro - Part 1. Links to both the main presentation and follow-up QA have been added to the abug.org.uk website and are linked within this thread (hopefully we'll be able to add the supporting presentation to the post soon, as a PDF).

Apols to Kees and Tricky for only briefly covering your updates, we'll make these the first items we cover in the updates section on the next Dev night, which will be on Thursday 10th September, 7pm - 10pm (as agreed in the meeting, we're going twice a month with these dev sessions now - as we didn't manage to fit everything in tonight, and could have easily gone into more detail on many of the topics).

Also on 10th Sept, watch out for Part 2 of Kieran's Masterclass on interrupts!

[0xC0DE]

Very enjoyable and very interesting, thanks everyone!

Edit: for some reason I now have a strong urge to play Leisure Suit Larry again

[tricky]

Thanks Dave for organising, it really helps to keep things moving and there is no shortage of content with your eagle eye spotting subjects.
As I was going to include how I used interrupts in my last two ports/emulators, so it might be better after Kieran's Part 2.
There seemed to be quite a bit of interest in playing music, so I could cover my music player and how I convert AY3, although it isn't as sophisticated as the bitshifters' tools and player - but it is quite small

[dudleysoft71]

Thanks everyone, I enjoyed last night.

Great to see so much being worked on, Jet-Pac almost looked like a complete remake with the NULA graphics. I'll definitely try to make it to as many of these as possible, I probably wont always have anything to show. At some point I'll look at putting together a masterclass on C development on the ARM co-processor.

[Snuggsy187]

Just echoing thanks to Dave, Kieran, and all those who did show and tell. Most enjoyable.

Definitely given me a renewed prod to get back onto Pooyan stuff........
......alas I'm meant to be working......

AY3 conversion would certainly be of interest to me !

[Dave Footitt]

Very enjoyable evening there's so much activity going on at the moment it seems.

Sorry I had to run off pretty sharpish, I was intrigued by the rocket sync tracker (mainly cos I was baffled by it!) so hope to see it next time.

[markdryan]

Thanks for organising Dave. It was another really interesting evening with some great demos.

> At some point I'll look at putting together a masterclass on C development on the ARM co-processor.

Yes please. I'd like to try to get my BASIC compiler (Subtilis) running on the native ARM co pro.